


The Earth Won't Ignore Her

by Hecate



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wakes up broken and not herself. Post 5x10</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Earth Won't Ignore Her

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made.

She wakes up broken and not herself, her mind filled with the memory of pain and good-byes. She wakes up and she is alive.

She looks around, sees trees and shades of green, hears the sounds of a road close by. Her mother is not there, her absence a hole in her body, a hole in the world, and it hurts when she breathes. 

The sun shines in a sky without clouds.

It's time to get up again, she knows, to be a hunter, to find out what has happened to her. And yet, she stays on the ground, pulls this unfamiliar body all around her, and closes her eyes. Her mother isn't there and she is alive.

She waits for the shock to hit her, for her feelings to become real again. Instead, her mind and heart feel deaf and mute, and she sits in the sunshine.

"Jo Harvelle," a voice like steel and spring says, "get on your feet."

She opens her eyes to the sound, something stirring inside of her, a feeling like fear, suppressed and yet eager. There's nothing around her, nothing but the world, and she frowns.

"Where are you?" she asks, and knows she won't get a reply. A shudder runs through her body. "Who are you?" She is not certain she wants an answer. "God?"

Laughter follows her question, deep and light, seasons passing through the sound. "No. Never had much to do with the boy."

"What do you want?"

Silence, for eternities, seconds going by.

Then.

"You will save me."

***

Jo wakes and it is night, the stars and moon glaring down at her. _Move_ , they say, and she stumbles to her feet. She's alone and alive, and she has a mission again.

There's a wooden sword by her feet, a joke of a weapon, but she picks it up anyway. It's warm to the touch, almost alive, and Jo thinks of knights in shining armour and princesses saving themselves.

She wants to laugh but can't, takes a few steps and breathes reality into her body. Another step, and she hears the road again, grips the sword harder and starts to walk.

***

She avoids the mirror in the hotel room for hours, passing it with her eyes on the floor. She's not ready yet, can't imagine she'll ever be.

She undresses and washes a stranger's clothes in the sink, showers and feels heat and water on skin not her own. She breathes differently now.

She falls asleep with the lights of passing cars wandering across the ceiling. In her dreams, stars are falling from the sky and spring speaks to her again. She knows she won't remember but listens anyway, scared and missing her mother.

The world is still there in the morning. Only her surprise tells her that she didn't expect it to be.

***

"Did you used to be a real girl?" Jo asks the girl in the mirror, wondering if she's wearing that face like a demon, like an angel. She searches for another soul, a voice screaming to get out again. But it's silent inside her skin, her heartbeat the only sound.

She's alone.

She's been travelling for days now, her smile and her feet paying the passage. Sometimes, she wakes up at another place, her head bursting with memories, her hands reaching for her sword.

She wonders if this is how Dean feels, and doubts it. He can name the powers that follow him, push him around; she is still lost. Research has yielded nothing, the few hunters she dares to talk to have no answers. She doesn't tell them she died, does not ask for the Winchesters. They have their battles to fight. This one is her own.

She's collecting things, books and plants and words, her hands guided by something residing inside her bones and outside her flesh. She might get closer to an answer. She doubts it. This is the long game. It's the only one.

No matter how much she sleeps, she always wakes up tired, her body bruised. She thinks she might be running at night, she thinks something is teaching her. What, she doesn't know.

Sometimes, she's scared. 

Sometimes, she hates the voice that comes to her at night. She dreams of her mother then, the manipulation angering her. But it's her mother's smile she sees, and she can't help but be grateful.

"What's your name?" she asks the mirror. The driver's license she found in her backpack tells her it's Alice. She laughed when she first read it, tipped her head to the joke she's not quite sure she truly gets.

"Alice," Jo says. Shrugs. It's good enough for the world to hear.

At least it isn't Eve.

***

Castiel sees her and knows her, her name falling from his lips. She nods at the angel, nods at the brothers. They don't test her, the angel's words enough. It's a relief.

She stays with them for a few days, restless. She wants to stay longer, needs the comfort of people seeing behind the face she's wearing now. But the voice in her dreams is angry, impatient. It curses Castiel, disregards the Winchesters.

She thinks it might be evil and knows she's wrong. That thing isn't anything, it just is, and that might be scarier than dealing with Lucifer and God.

"Why me?" she asks into the bright colours that fills her dreams; Dean dreaming of hell just steps away.

A shrug runs through this world, minutes pass before she gets an answer. 

"Hell or heaven, I don't want either on my back. It all belongs to Him. I don't."

"I don't belong to you either," Jo says after a while. "I'm more than your weapon."

Jo wakes up.

She leaves at night, her feet leading her to Castiel before she walks out on the remains of her human history. He looks at her with eyes too young and old, and she tries to put a smile on her face.

"Do you know what saved me?" she asks, and waits for an angel to answer all her questions.

"No," Castiel says, and she knows he lies. 

She nods and leaves, witching hour upon them. A flower raises its head in the sea of concrete surrounding the motel.

***

She walks side by side with a dirt road, her steps strangely easy. Her feet stopped hurting miles and days ago, the wind backs her way.

The demon calling herself Meg died at her hands, an afterthought during a day filled with digging through graveyard soil. Days have gone by since then, the blood washed from her hands, the wooden sword darker now.

She talks to the world while she walks it, speaks of her mother's smile and her father's laughter. The leaves and birds and earth listens.

She is her mother's daughter and not a God's son, her father a memory and a dream. Her death left her behind, spat her out into a battle in which she thought she didn't matter. She was wrong and the earth was waiting for her return, heaven and hell forgotten.

She is kind of lost. It doesn't matter. Maybe she doesn't need to be found.


End file.
